Skopje, 27 October 2023 (MIA) - All archives, film theaters, museums and institutes in the world mark on Friday the 2023 World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, with activities, promotions and events that will help direct the focus towards the significance and vulnerability of audiovisual heritage.

As part of the big family of professionals and institutions committed to the protection and preservation of film cultural heritage, the Cinematheque in Skopje is also involved in the celebration of 2023 World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.

Citizens who visit the Cinematheque on Friday from 11am to 3pm will receive free print or DVD publications from the Cinematheque, including a tour of its premises and depositories that preserve the national audiovisual, i.e. film heritage. Those who will attend the screenings of the Macedonian films "Te dua, I Swear" (2023, directed by Marjan Gavrilovski) and "M" (2023, directed by Vardan Tozija) from 6pm to 8pm, will also receive free publications.

"In fact, the whole month of October at the Cinematheque is dedicated to the preservation of film heritage, its promotion and protection against obscurity and destruction, therefore making it available for citizens. Recently, the space where these publications, library fund, and legacy of the Macedonian director Dimitrie Osmanli were kept were expanded and renovated, and Sunchica Simonovska-Veselinovska’s book "Documentary Film and Identity" will be published and promoted soon. This month, Macedonian cinematography was presented to audiences in Montenegro, Croatia and Serbia, and Manaki Brothers films were part of the official programme at the Tbilisi International Archival Film Festival, which was held in Tbilisi, Georgia," the Cinematheque said in a press release.

World Day for Audiovisual Heritage was established in honor of the adoption of the Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images by the 21st session of the General Conference of UNESCO in 1980. Three and a half decades later, UNESCO supplemented and expanded the initial recommendation with a new one, and in 2015 adopted the Recommendation concerning the preservation of, and access to, documentary heritage including in digital form.

The Cinematheque recently released a Blu-ray edition that contains five ethnographic documentaries filmed in the middle of the last century. The films "Easter Customs" (1954, directed by Aco Petrovski), "Galichnik Wedding" (1955, directed by Aco Petrovski), "Dervish" (1955, directed by Aco Petrovski), "Rusalii" (957, directed by Blagoja Drnkov), "Mariovo Wedding" (1955, directed by Vera Klichkova) were digitized and restored by Professor Valadimir Pavlovski, thanks to the "Season of Film Classics" project, realized by the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE), and financed by the EU's Creative Europe MEDIA programme. ssh/nn/

Photo: Cinematheque